Scott Jackisch

Scott Jackisch is a blogger at the Oakland Futurist, where he reports on conferences, symposiums, and salons. He is interested in cognitive science, Quantified Self, the Long Now, the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial scene, and he’s the founder/director of East Bay Futurists.

Gray Scott

Gray Scott an IEET Advisory Board member, is a futurist, techno-philosopher, speaker, writer and artist. He is the founder and CEO of SeriousWonder.com and a professional member of The World Future Society.

Gray Scott has been quoted and interviewed by the Discovery Channel, New York Post, Psychology Today, The Star, The Washington Post, FOX News, San Francisco Magazine, The Futurist Magazine , H+ Magazine, IEET, Brighter Brains, London Futurists, OracleTalk and SingularityHub. Gray is a frequent keynote speaker and has spoken at LucidNYC, Connector Con NYC, Transhuman Visions Conference, and The Longevity Conference held recently in Washington DC. Gray lives in NY and is currently working on his first book about the future of technology.

Agbolade Omowole

Chase Uy

Chase Uy is an undergraduate student pursuing a BA in Human Ecology at College of the Atlantic, focusing in anthropology and philosophy. He is interested in exploring the impacts of technology on cultures (particularly the role of fear in people’s perception of emerging technologies).

Enrique Lescure

Enrique Lescure is director and co-founder of EOS (Earth Organization for Sustainability). EOS is an autonomous research organization that recognizes the need for a sustainable civilization to unlock humanity’s potential.

Danko Nikolic

Danko Nikolic is associated with the Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, Ernst Strüngmann Institute, Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, and the University of Zagreb.

The ultimate goal of his studies is twofold. First, to achieve conceptual understanding of how the dynamics of physical processes creates the mental ones. He believes work on practopoiesis is an important step in this direction that will help address the hard problem of consciousness and the mind-body problem in general. Second, to use this theoretical knowledge to create artificial systems that are biologically-like intelligent and adaptive.

Anish Mohammed

Anish Mohammed is multi disciplinarian who in the past has worked as a medical doctor, bioinformatician, security expert/cryptographer and most recently as consultant. Some one who is passionate about technology, especially cloud computing, big data, cryptography and security. He is also an avid robotics enthusiast who is actively involved in Open Source Unmanned Aerial Vehicle projects. Currently he serves on the advisory board for Ripple Labs and EA Ventures. He is a also founding member of UKDCA.He is also a Singularity University GSP and Exponential Medicine alumnus.

Ari Berwaldt

Ari Berwaldt has a degree in Cognitive Science with experience in data science and neuroscience. He has long had an interest in improving the human condition and raising the quality of life using the most efficacious means available. Currently he focuses on meditation, nootropic, and neurohacking related technologies.

Riza Berkan

Dr. Riza Berkan is a nuclear physicist by training. He has worked on artificial intelligence, fuzzy logic, and semantics over the past two decades with emphasis on search and dialogue systems. In his own words, his main interest is “the bridge between technology, which is solving problems without understanding them, and science which is understanding problems without actually solving them.”

Joel Marks

Adrian Cull

Adrian Cull is the founder of the Live Forever Club which monitors advances in life extension technology as well as longevity and health research, translating these findings into practical tips for living forever. By day Adrian is an IT business analyst with a broad range of experience from network infrastructure through user-interface design and data analysis to IT business processes. He is looking forward to using these skills to understand and track developments in health technology that leads to radical life extension.

Soenke Ziesche

Soenke Ziesche holds a PhD in Natural Sciences from the University of Hamburg, which he received within a Doctoral Program in Artificial Intelligence. He is also an alumnus of the Graduate Studies Program of the Singularity University.

Soenke has worked in the past 15 years for the United Nations on four continents in the humanitarian and development sector. He worked in Gaza with Palestinian refugees, in Sri Lanka after the Tsunami, in Pakistan after the Kashmir earthquake, in Sudan after the end of the North-South conflict and he was the highest UN representative in Libya during the revolution. He was also posted to New York for four years and to London for one year. Most recently, he was the Head of the Communication and Information Management Unit in Pakistan, and thereafter he has developed a disaster information management guideline for the Government of Bangladesh.

Dr. Yampolskiy’s main areas of interest are AI Safety, Artificial Intelligence, Behavioral Biometrics, Cybersecurity, Digital Forensics, Games, Genetic Algorithms, and Pattern Recognition. Dr. Yampolskiy is an author of over 100 publications including multiple journal articles and books. His research has been cited by 1000+ scientists and profiled in popular magazines both American and foreign (New Scientist, Poker Magazine, Science World Magazine), dozens of websites (BBC, MSNBC, Yahoo! News), on radio (German National Radio, Swedish National Radio, Alex Jones Show) and TV. Dr. Yampolskiy’s research has been featured 250+ times in numerous media reports in 22 languages.

Chad White

Chad S. White is a graduate from the University of California with a Master’s degree in cell biology. He has taught several subjects at the college level, including chemistry, microbiology, advanced biology, and molecular biology.

Kourosh Afrashteh

Kourosh Afrashteh is the founder of Project Prometheus, a Bay Area group fostering human genetic engineering. He is working to develop a commercial venture to research “designer babies”.

His professional background includes an undergraduate degree in Molecular Genetics and a brief 2 year stint in a PhD program in Neuroscience, both from the University of Toronto. He is licensed Dentist in Ontario, and owns a chain of Dental Clinics.

Mark Waser

Mark Waser is Chief Technology Officer of the Digital Wisdom Institute and D161T4L W15D0M Inc., organizations devoted to the ethical implementation of advanced technologies for the benefit of all. He has been publishing data science research since 1983 and developing commercial AI software since 1984 including an expert system shell and builder for Citicorp, a neural network to evaluate thallium cardiac images for Air Force pilots and, recently, mobile front-ends for cloud-based AI and data science.

He is particularly interested in safe ethical architectures and motivational systems for intelligent machines (including humans). As an AI ethicist, he has presented at numerous conferences and published articles in international journals as well as a chapter in the recently released Machine Medical Ethics (Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering). His current projects and ramblings can be found at the Digital Wisdom website. He is looking forward to the 50PH14 project and wondering how he got to the point of having adult children and a suburban backyard full of chickens and bees.

Christopher J. Benek

Rev. Dr. Christopher J. Benek is a pastor in South Florida. He is also internationally recognized as an expert social and religious analyst and commentator, techno-theologian, futurist, ethicist, Christian Transhumanist, public speaker and writer.

William Manning Hiltman

William Manning Hiltman lives in Atlanta, owns his own truck and works a job at a farm-to-table restaurant while training executives in peak-performance and fitness throughout the Southeast. He has been researching and experimenting with wellness, fitness, and nutrition since 2006 and now draws from the best within each discipline.

Nicole Sallak Anderson

Nicole Sallak Anderson is a Computer Science graduate from Purdue University. After graduation, she developed encryption and network security software, which inspired both the storyline and the science behind the eHuman Trilogy—both eHuman Dawn and eHuman Deception are available at Amazon, the third installment is expected in early 2016. She currently lives with her husband and two teenaged sons on two acres in the Santa Cruz mountains of Northern California, where she indulges in a variety of homesteading hobbies, from beekeeping and raising chickens and goats, to gardening, canning, spinning, and knitting.

You can follow her musings on singularity, internet privacy, data manipulation and human consciousness at eHuman Dawn on Facebook, @NSallakAnderson on Twitter or her blog. Feel free to contact her, she almost always answers to any query or comment!

Brent Logan Reitze

Brent Logan Reitze is an Information Technology Systems Engineer and Singularitarian with an ongoing focus on technological advances, particularly man-machine interfaces. He served nine years in the U.S. Army as an Information Technology Specialist, achieving the rank of Staff Sergeant, serving Operation Enduring Freedom in Africa, and completing his bachelor’s degree in Information Systems Management from the University of Maryland University College before being Honorably Discharged. He is now a disabled veteran using his Post-911 GI-Bill to pursue a master’s degree in Cyber-Security. He lives with his wife in Bowie, Maryland. He can be contacted via Linkedin.

Riva-Melissa Tez

Riva-Melissa Tez lives between San Francisco and London and works with venture capitalists and institutional investors in funding transformative technologies. Self-proclaimed fan of ‘children’ and ‘tech’, her first company at 18 was a children’s store and club ‘R.S.Currie & Co’, which still stands in London.

After exiting the company at 21 and graduating from a UCL Philosophy degree, Riva moved to Germany to co-found a children’s digital creative platform. This surrealist kids self-pubsishing platform went on to partner with children’s book publishing houses including Bertelsmann and Random House. Whilst in Germany, her academic background in Philosophy got her interested in the deeper implications of science and technology. She is the founder of the much-acclamed group Berlin Singularity, which focused on bringing emerging technology discussions to mainland Europe. Through her efforts with Berlin Singularity, she spun out a consultancy group working with early-stage technology companies to help connect them to funding and, as a result of this, was ranked Number 41 in The Hundert , Germany’s 100 Most Influential People in Technology 2013. She went on to take teaching positions at the DAB and HTW business schools in Germany.

She is a regular columnist for The European Magazine, a contributor to i-D Magazine, H+ Magazine and is currently penning a philosophical children’s novel. Her essay ‘The Future Doesn’t Care About Your Start-Up’ was published in the UK book ‘Anticipating 2025’. She authored ‘Finance: An Industry Based on Psychology’ as an attendee of the Stanford Institutional Investor Forum (November 2014). A guest speaker at Yale Business School and Yale Law School (February 2015) ‘Investing from First-Principles: The Need for Systematic Game-Changers to Create Paradigm Shifts’, as well as a guest speaker at Birkbeck Uniersity ‘Obstacles Faced by Emerging Technologies’ , Oxford University ‘Funding Emerging Technologies’ and Stanford University ‘Start-Ups to Advance Humanity’. Presenter at the Effective Altruist Retreat 2014 ‘Investing in the Future: Turning Theory into Business Practice’. She holds the winning title of the first ever European LinkedIn Hackathon of 2013. A 2014 Apple Spokesperson on Philosophy and Emerging Technology that included a European speaking tour, since 2012, she has spoken at over 50 conferences and events, including for Vanity Fair’s Intelligence.

Riva is a Strategic Advisor to the Transhumanist Political Party, as well as an Investor and Advisor to a Stanford University based start-up tackling the academic journal pipeline. Alongside Steve Aoki and Maria Konvalenko, she is helping produce The Longevity Cookbook, a forthcoming recipe book and research project focused on slowing down the aging process. She is currently taking up a volunteer teaching role on the Financial Literacy Course at San Quentin Prison.

Douglas Cruickshank

Douglas Cruickshank has written journalism, travel stories, profiles, essays and opinion pieces for many magazines, newspapers and web sites and has worked in radio, television and film-making. He has been a photographer for more than four decades, a columnist and editor for Salon.com, and has edited numerous books.

Scott Santens

Scott Santens is a writer and advocate of basic income for all. He’s a member of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network, moderator of the /r/BasicIncome community on Reddit, and founder of The BIG Patreon Creator Pledge. He lives in New Orleans and blogs at scottsantens.com.

David Kekich

David Kekich is a recognized authority on longevity science. In 1999, he founded “Maximum Life Foundation”, dedicated to reversing human aging and aging related diseases. The Foundation has developed a scientific roadmap to transform the elderly to biological youth. He heads an initiative to develop leading-edge drugs nutraceuticals with an artificial intelligence breakthrough that may lead to accelerated drug design for aging and aging-related diseases.

He realized the inevitability that science will someday control the human aging process. He understood human beings will someday be able to enjoy very long health spans by studying aging, the root cause of most deadly diseases. The problem? He was in a race against the clock. He was faced with the possibility of being part of the “last generation” to suffer and die from aging related diseases.

He raises funds for life-extending research. He serves as a Board Member of the American Aging Association, Life Extension Buyers’ Club and Alcor Life Extension Foundation Patient Care Trust Fund.

Mr. Kekich first became intrigued with extreme life extension in 1977 after founding the country’s largest life insurance master general agency, which raised $3.1 billion of premium income for First Executive Corp. This was where he was widely exposed to the realities and horrors of death from aging. He currently serves as CEO of SciCog Systems and Age Reversal, Inc.

Masereka Solomon

Masereka Solomon graduated from Makerere University in 2010. He is a teacher’s assistant at Kasese Humanist Primary School in western Uganda. His speciality is incorporating new technology into the curriculum as educational aids.

Jd Otit

Keith B. Wiley

Dr. Keith B. Wiley is a researcher with experience across numerous fields within computer science. He has been involved in the ongoing discussion of philosophical and practical aspects of mind uploading for twenty years. His first book on the subject, A Taxonomy and Metaphysics of Mind-Uploading, was released in 2014 with support from Humanity+ Press. Dr. Wiley’s articles and papers are available at http://keithwiley.com.

Steven Umbrello

Steven Umbrello is a student of philosophy of science and technology at the University of Toronto as well as a junior associate at the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute. His primary research focus is on the ethics and philosophy of emerging technologies and Stoicism as practical philosophy. You can find more of Steven’s work on his website Stoically Speaking.

Roland Benedikter

Roland Benedikter is Research Scholar at the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies of the University of California at Santa Barbara, Senior Affiliate of the Edmund Pellegrino Center on Bioethics of Georgetown University, Trustee of the Toynbee Prize Foundation Boston, Senior Research Scholar of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs Washington DC and Full member of the Club of Rome.

Previously, he was a Long-term Visiting Scholar / Research Affiliate 2009-13 at the Europe Center of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, and a Full Academic Fellow 2008-12 of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies Washington DC.

He has written for Foreign Affairs, Harvard International Review and Challenge: The Magazine of Economic Affairs, and is author of books about global strategic issues (among them most recently two on Xi Jinping’s China in 2014), co-author of two Pentagon and U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff White Papers on the Ethics of Neurowarfare (2013 and 2014, together with James Giordano) and of Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker’s Report to the Club of Rome 2003. Contact: r.benedikter@orfaleacenter.ucsb.edu and rolandbenedikter@yahoo.de.

Thomas Damberger

Thomas Damberger is postdoctoral research associate at the Goethe-University Frankfurt (Germany). He studied pedagogy and philosophy and completed his doctorate with a critical work about pedagogical and technological improvement of humans. His main fields of research are the philosophy of education, pedagogy and human enhancement, and digital media. More information and many downloads: http://thomas-damberger.de

Maria Ramos

Maria Ramos is a writer interested in comic books, cycling, and horror films. Her hobbies include cooking, doodling, and finding local shops around the city. She currently lives in Chicago with her two pet turtles, Franklin and Roy. You can follow her on Twitter @MariaRamos1889.

Erick Vasconcelos

Skye Nelson

Skye Nelson is a writer, activist, philosopher and artist. She holds BA in Philosophy and Humanities, has many years of activist experience in the LGBT rights movement, and is well established as a digital artist working in virtual worlds (particularly, she is a well established content creator in Second Life).

She is a contributor to the Anarchist-Transhumanist manifesto and is particularly interested in the social consequences and related ethics of brain-computer interface technology. As a vocal supporter of the SENS Research Foundation, she also has keen interest in the advancement of anti-aging technology.

Utibe Effiong

Dr. Utibe Effiong is the Writer-in-Residence at the University of Michigan Risk Science Center. In this role, Dr. Effiong runs Risk Without Borders, a unique blog which examines emerging risk issues through the lens of a developing economy.

Dr. Effiong is a qualified physician and public health scientist. He holds the MBBCh degree from the University of Calabar, membership of the Nigerian National Postgraduate Medical College of Physicians and the MPH degree from the University of Michigan. He is also a New Voices Fellow with the Aspen Institute.

Dr. Effiong is no stranger to public health risk communication having spent 3 years at the University of Michigan where he has produced nearly 50 publications. Dr. Effiong also has more than 13 years of experience in the Nigerian health system.

Prior to starting Risk Without Borders, Dr. Effiong spent 2 years as a research scientist with the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Before that he had worked for six years as an Internist with several Nigerian hospitals including the University of Uyo Teaching hospital and General Hospital Umunnato where he carried out clinical duties, medical research, student/physician training and health education for diabetic patients.

Drawing on 16 years’ experience in healthcare, research and risk communication, Dr. Effiong now focuses on creating a global understanding of emerging risk issues through the lens of a developing economy. He does this through his writing, interviews and public speeches. His articles have been featured in the Huffington Post and the Detroit Free Press. He has given several television, radio and magazine interviews and has spoken at various international fora. Most recently he spoke at Exponential Medicine and gave a TED talk in Berlin.

Allison Duettmann

Allison Duettmann, 23 years old, is a postgrad Philosophy and Public Policy student at the London School of Economics (LSE), specialised in Applied Ethics and Experimental Psychology. In her dissertation she focuses on adjusting moral intuitions to the challenges posed by the vast grow in nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology. She intends to deepen this question in a PhD focusing on the use of experimental psychology to mark out and overcome the evolutionary bias which is coded into our moral intuitions.

For the Bachelor in Philosophy, Politics and Economics she has written on euthanasia, the ethical implications of eternal life and the consequences of globalism. She co-designed and panelled a competition on Innovative Ideas and For Pacific Rubiales, Latin America’s largest non-state owned oil producer in Bogotá and was on the government workgroup in Medellín for the city’s innovation programme. Prior to that she worked with several NGO’s around Latin America and entered with her idea for a digital NGO network into the McKinsey Venture Academy competition.

She was research assistant to Claire Fox, leader of the Institute of Ideas focusing on ethical controversies fort he BBC’S Moral Maze and helped organize the panels on Biomedical Battles and Interrogating Megatrends for the Battle of Ideas 2014. She was elected for scholarships to The Academy outside London, Global Young Leader’s Conference in NY, Presidential Inaugural Conference in Washington D.C. and further programs for highly gifted students in Berlin. Including her mother tongue German, she speaks 4 languages and is currently also working as translator.

Ted Kupper

Michael Petr

Michael Petr is a research fellow at the National Institute on Aging within the National Institutes of Health. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree from North Carolina State University in Biomedical Engineering, where he was also largely involved in community outreach and several professional societies. His work spans from the development of medical devices in developing countries, to educating youth and peers on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) topics. Michael has published articles related age-related disease and aging in Yahoo Finance and other media outlets.

As a coordinator of point-of-care testing (POCT) medical devices to countries within Africa, he seeks to significantly increase the rate of diagnosis for blood-related illness and disease.

David Wood

David Wood, D.Sc., has spent 25 years envisioning, architecting, designing, implementing, and avidly using smart mobile devices. As one of the pioneers of the smartphone industry, he co-founded Symbian, the creator of the world’s first successful smartphone operating system, and served on the leadership teams of Psion Software and Symbian from 1996-2009. At different times, his executive responsibilities included software development, technical consulting, developer evangelism, partnering and ecosystem management, and research and innovation. The EPOC32 mobile operating system, of which he was the architect and head of integration of upper layers, went on (renamed as “Symbian OS”) to ship in half a billion smartphones between 2001 and 2012.

From 2010 to 2013, David was Technology Planning Lead (CTO) of Accenture Mobility, leading the global team that identified and oversaw staged investments to create assets using emerging or fast-changing mobile technologies. He also co-led Accenture’s “Mobility Health” business initiative, “Mobility innovation for dramatically better healthcare”. He now acts as independent futurist, consultant, and writer, at Delta Wisdom.

As chair of London Futurists, David has organized regular meetings in London since March 2008 on futurist, transhumanist, technoprogressive, and singularitarian topics. Membership of London Futurists now exceeds 3,000. Recently David has been building the new UK Transhumanist Party.

David received a triple first class mathematics degree from Cambridge, UK. Also at Cambridge, he undertook four years of doctoral research in the philosophy of science – covering the philosophy of mind, the characterisation of pseudo-science, creationism vs. Darwinism, and the shocking implications of quantum mechanics.

In November 2005 David received an honorary Doctorate in Science (D.Sc.) from the University of Westminster, in recognition of his services to the smartphone industry. T3 magazine included him in 2009 in their list of the “100 most influential people in technology”. In 2010 he featured in the world’s first Augmented Reality CV.

Joseph R. Carvalko

Joseph R. Carvalko, author, lawyer, and engineer devotes his attention to the intersection of law and technology. Currently he is an adjunct professor of Law, Science and Technology at Quinnipiac University School of Law; a member of the IEEE, Soc. on Social Implications of Tech., and IEEE Eng. in Medicine and Biology Soc.; member of the ABA, Sec. of Science and Technology Law, and former ed. board member of SciTech Lawyer and former chair of the Behavioral Sciences Committee. He is also a member of the Yale Community Bioethics Forum of the Program on Biomedical Ethics at Yale School of Medicine; a member of the Yale Technology and Ethics working research group. Recently, he co-authored (Cara Morris) The Science and Technology Guidebook for Lawyers (ABA Pub., May, 2014, 398 pp). He authored The Techno-Human Shell: A Jump in the Evolutionary Gap (Sunbury Press, 2012), as well as articles and papers: Law and Policy in an Era of Cyborg-Assisted-Life (IEEE, Tech & Soc.); Introduction to an Ontology of Intellectual Property (ABA SciTech); Intellectual Property Issues in the Financial & Banking Industries (PA Bar Assn); Who Should Own In-The-Body Medical Data in the Age of Electronic Medicine? (IEEE, Soc. & Tech Mag.); Patents Pave Way for Strategies in IP Intensive Environments (Cisco World); An Alternative for Distillate Fuel Filtration, (Diesel & Gas Worldwide). Co-author: On Determining Optimum Simple Golay Marking Transforms for Binary Image Processing, (IEEE Trans. on Computers) and Evaluation of a High Resolution Television Microscope, (Proc. of the IEEE). He authored, Basic Copyright chapter: Now What? The Creative Writer’s Guide to Success after the MFA (Fairfield U. Press); New Medical Technologies-the Emergence of Pharmaco-Electronics chapter: Biotechnology and the Law (ABA Pub., 2015). Other writing credits include: We Were Beautiful Once, Chapters from the Cold War, a Novel (Sunbury Press, 2013), finalist Best Historical Fiction, Military Writers Society of America, 2014; A Road Once Traveled, Life from All Sides, autobiography (2007); A Deadly Fog, book of poems and essays and poems (2004): Detras del Acero (Editorial Trance, 2015, original Spanish poetry, 97pp.); Poems: Mobius Strip, (FLARE: The Flagler Review and in Anomalie Magazine, RE: mind, Goldsmiths University of London, 2015); County Road 80, Manifest West (U. Press of CO, fall 2014); Registered Letter, Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors, Vol. 2 (MS Hum. Council, and SE MS State University Press, 2013); The Road Home, finalist, (Esurance Poetry prize, 2012); The Interior, book of poetry, finalist (Red Mountain Press, 2012). Short stories: Winter Interrupted, All Gave Some (Military Writers Society of America, Anthology, 2014); Road to Suwon (Military Experience and the Arts, 2014); Reminders of the Next Round, (Storytellers, 2013); As a researcher and engineer, he worked in radar, optics, A.I. (pattern recognition), biomedical devices and communications. He holds 12 patents (1978-2014, some jointly) in electronics, biomedical, and computers. He is admitted to practice law in CT, NY, and before the U.S. Pat. & TM Office. He holds a JD, Quinnipiac University School of Law, BS in Electrical Engineering, Fairfield University, and a MFA (Writing) from Fairfield University.

Tom Guarriello

Tom Guarriello was born in The Bronx at the beginning of the Baby Boom. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in psychology from the University of Dayton and earned a doctorate in clinical psychology from Duquesne University.

Tom specializes in helping individuals and organizations develop the creative ideas, innovative methods and customer-focused products needed to succeed in rapidly changing environments. He co-founded TrueTalk Consulting with Peggy Kelston in 1994. The firm focuses on enhancing organizational creativity by strengthening social systems. Tom has been fascinated with the social/psychological impact of technology since spearheading his first IT project in 1981. He has authored The TrueTalk Blog since 2004. In 2006, he was invited by YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen to be one of five members of the inaugural YouTube Community Council and became Twitter member #13,512 (@tomguarriello). Tom has worked with a wide variety of companies (from Victoria’s Secret to Harvard Business Review) in the apparel retail, publishing, insurance, health care, transportation, and communication industries. In late 2009, Tom was invited to become a faculty member in the newly launched Masters In Branding program at New York’s School of Visual Arts. He currently teaches “The Meaning of Branded Objects,” a course in the psychology of branding from an experiential standpoint.

John G. Messerly

John G. Messerly is an Affiliate Scholar of the IEET. He received his PhD in philosophy from St. Louis University in 1992. He was a member of the faculty of both the philosophy and computer science departments for many years at the University of Texas at Austin, where he taught courses on the ethical and philosophical implications of emerging technologies. He is the author of books on ethical theory, evolutionary philosophy, and the meaning of life, as well as dozens of articles, mostly on transhumanist themes. He is also an Affiliate Member of the Evolution, Complexity, and Cognition Group (localized at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel), and an adjunct professor of philosophy at Seattle University.

He is currently interested in how technological and cosmic evolution shed light on existential questions about the meaning in life. His most recent book is The Meaning of Life: Religious, Philosophical, Scientific, and Transhumanist Perspectives. He blogs daily on issues of philosophy, evolution, futurism and the meaning of life at his website: reasonandmeaning.com.

Michael Abrams

Michael Abrams is a freelance journalist in New York and the author of Birdmen, Batmen, and Skyflyers. When not reporting on what’s new and quirky in the world of science and engineering, he’s busy raising his two daughters or plunking on his banjo, not usually at the same time.

Joel Lehman

Joel Lehman is a computer science researcher focused on artificial intelligence and neural networks. He has published over 25 peer-reviewed publications and has a patent pending. Currently, Joel is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin and is also co-founder of Finchbeak LLC, a start-up company integrating cutting-edge AI research with social computer games. Joel writes about technological evolution and moral enhancement at http://worldbetter.svbtle.com/.

Alex Nichols

Alex Nichols currently lives in San Francisco California working at Lyft. He spent most of his childhood in Berkeley and Nova Scotia. Attending the University of British Columbia in Vancouver BC, he graduated with a BA in psychology and a minor in philosophy where he studied under the tutelage of two pioneers in health and cultural psychology. Their research focused on (1.) the efficacy of cognitive behavioral treatments for obsessive compulsive disorder, and (2.) behavioral patterns coinciding with meaning making and how people respond to violations of such frameworks.

Upon graduating, Alex has developed and taught the core social skills curriculum for a program focused on supporting adults with Aspergers and Autism in Berkeley. Seeking to get closer to the world of accelerating technology and startups, he started as an operations associate while Lyft was still in its infancy. In his spare time, Alex enjoys reading recent discoveries in stem cell therapy, physics, cosmology, biotechnology, neuroscience, ethics, and the implications of futuristic technologies. Currently, he is most intrigued with the philosophies of transhumanism, the ethical discussions that are thrust forward from these ideas, and the cross over in themes from existentialism, religion, and moral psychology. Outside of work and reading, Alex practices Judo and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and enjoys backpacking with family and friends.

Peter Rothman

Peter Rothman is a computer scientist, author and futurist. He is presently performing independent research in the fields of artificial intelligence and intelligence augmentation applied to futures studies, and is the editor of h+ Magazine the online publication of Humanity+. In the 1990s he did award winning research in the field of virtual reality for the U.S. government and his company Avatar Partners developed various well known applications of virtual reality including financial visualization application vrTrader.

Prior to his work in the field of VR, Peter led a variety of cutting edge R&D projects including developing desktop flight simulators, a neural network chemical detection & recognition system, designing a digital/analog neural computer for DARPA, and more. He has developed popular consumer software products, mobile apps, and web properties as well as embedded mission critical applications. Peter holds a B.A. in mathematics from the University of California at Santa Cruz and an M.S. in computer engineering from the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering.

David S. D’Amato

David S. D’Amato is the Benjamin R. Tucker Distinguished Research Scholar in Anarchist Economic Theory at the Center for a Stateless Society. D’Amato is an attorney and holds a J.D. from New England School of Law and an LL.M. in Global Law and Technology from Suffolk University Law School. A Boston native, D’Amato now lives and writes in Chicago, Illinois.

Michael Jeffers

Michael Jeffers holds a Master’s degree from Drexel University’s Science, Technology, and Society graduate program. His next academic goal is to complete a doctorate in either the sociology of science, or biomedical science policy in order to fight for better funding for research related to human longevity.

Joel Taylor

Joel Taylor is from Sacramento,California. He has a Bachelor’s in Physics. He understands quantum mechanics very well. He has worked at the Maryland Science Center, written articles for Scientific American, and owned his own consulting/research company. He is a member of AIP and APS.

Glenn McGee

Glenn McGee is Professor of Public Management in the College of Business at the University of New Haven. His work focuses on the relationship between society, technology and human flourishing. In particular, he has dealt with myraid question about genomics, the compensation of research subjects, models for parenting and enhancement, development of a pragmatism theory of bioethics, patenting and sale of biological materials, ethical issues in tissue and gene banks, and ethical issues in stem cell research.

McGee was the John B. Francis Endowed Chair in Bioethics (Center for Practical Bioethics, Kansas City, 2009-12); the John A. Balint Endowed Chair in Medical Ethics, and Professor of Medicine (Albany Medical College 2005-2008). From 1995-2005 he was assistant professor of medical ethics and of cellular & molecular engineering, nursing, and philosophy (University of Pennsylvania 1995-2005). He briefly left academia to take executive positions in biotechnology in Texas and Berlin, from late 2011 until early 2013. After 20 years in bioethics, he has shifted his focus to health policy and is 1) developing a model for state and local approaches to providing services and support around autism, 2) analyzing how developing nations integrate their health systems, and 3) building best practices for healthcare institutions regarding “big data”.

Eric Steinhart

Eric Steinhart grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania. He received his BS in Computer Science from the Pennsylvania State University, after which he worked as a software designer for several years. Many of his algorithms have been patented. He earned an MA in Philosophy from Boston College and was awarded a PhD in Philosophy from SUNY at Stony Brook. Since then, he has taught in the Philosophy Department at William Paterson University. His books have concerned Nietzsche, the logic of metaphor, mathematics, and life after death. Much of his work involves the application of new computational concepts to solve old philosophical problems. He loves New England and the American West, and enjoys all types of hiking and biking, chess, microscopy, and photography.

Kate Darling

Dr. Kate Darling is a Research Specialist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab and a Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Yale Information Society Project. She survived law school and holds a Doctorate of Sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich). Her primarily interest is in how technology intersects with society. Kate’s scholarly work has covered economic issues in intellectual property systems and she has served as an IP expert and advisor for multiple academic and private institutions. More recently, her work has focussed on the near-term effects of robotic technology, with a particular interest in social and ethical issues. She writes, holds workshops, and lectures on some of the more interesting developments in the world of human-robot interaction, and where we might find ourselves in the coming decades.

Adam A. Ford

Adam A. Ford is an IEET Affiliate Scholar, a futurist and IT professional who lives in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. He completed his Masters in IT (Distributed Systems) in 2003 and has been contracting in the IT sector since the late 90s. He is on the Board of Humanity+, and is the founder of H+ Australia, organises regular think tank oriented discussion groups, and conferencesaroundthefutureofscienceandtechnologyaimed at shaping the likelihood of a favorable future for humanity. He is spearheading the Future Day initiative, aimed at creating an international day of attention to matters regarding our future. He is a midnight oil burner, a skeptic, plays an assortment of musical instruments, and enjoys good sci-fi. Adam is also a part-time journalist, he regularly conducts interviews with rationalists, futurists, scientists and technologists - the videos end up on his blossoming YouTube channel with over 700 videos of exclusive material.

He is working on a documentary on possible futures of humanity. He also wishes to help improve the likelihood of a beneficial Intelligence Explosion.

Helen Kopnina

Helen Kopnina (Ph.D. Cambridge University, 2002) is currently employed at The Hague University of Applied Science in The Netherlands. She is a coordinator and lecturer of Sustainable Business program, and a researcher in the fields of environmental education and environmental social sciences. Kopnina is the author of over thirty peer reviewed articles and (co)author and (co)editor of nine books, including East to West Migration (Ashgate 2005); Crossing European Boundaries (Berghahn 2006); Environmental Anthropology Today (Routledge 2011); Anthropology of Environmental Education (Nova 2012); Environmental Anthropology: Future Directions (Routledge 2013); and forthcoming Sustainable Business: Key Issues (Routledge 2014); Sustainability: Key Issues (Routledge 2015); Major Works in Environmental Anthropology; and Handbook of Environmental Anthropology.

Mikey Siegel

Mikey Siegel has worked to advance human-robot interaction at NASA, MIT, Audi, and other leading institutions. Robotics work continued in a professional context until a change in life priorities pointed towards technology’s potential to reduce stress and increase joy by shifting people’s relationship to themselves. Recently in Hong Kong he acted as director of consciousness engineering at the Center for the Study of Non-Symbolic Consciousness where he focused on technology’s role in facilitating extraordinary states of wellbeing. Presently, Mikey is involved in a number of ventures including founding a company called BioFluent Technologies which creates tools designed to point us toward the simple joy of being alive, here and now. He is also actively promoting the idea of Consciousness Hacking which, in the spirit of the Maker Movement, encourages people to build new tools for exploring and altering the way we think, feel and live.

Maciamo Hay

Maciamo Hay is a Belgian researcher in genetics and technoprogressive futurist. He writes about accelerating change, emerging technologies, transhumanism, genetic enhancements, artificial intelligence, and the Singularity on his blog Life 2.0. A member and advisor at the Lifeboat Foundation, he is particularly concerned about the existential risk posed by an unrestrained artificial superintelligence. His articles have been published in H+ Magazine.

Maciamo is the founder and CEO of Eupedia.com, a website dedicated to European travel, culture, history and population genetics. He is well known for his contributions on European prehistory and historical genetics, notably his analysis of Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial haplogroups, but also his research on Neanderthals and evolutionary genetics. His interests also include economics, philosophy, evolutionary biology, bioengineering, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, cultural studies and linguistics. He speaks English, French, Italian and Japanese and has a good understanding of Dutch, German and Spanish.

Amon Twyman

Dr M. Amon Twyman (BSc, MSc Hons, DPhil) is an IEET Affiliate Scholar and philosopher interested in the impact of technology on humanity.

Amon's professional background is in both cognitive science and digital arts, and he has been a founding member of several organisations including the UK Transhumanist Association / Humanity+ UK, and the Transhumanist Party. Amon is currently the Transhumanist Party’s UK Party Leader, and Global Party Secretary.

William Gillis

William Gillis is a theoretical physicist based in Oakland California and a fellow at the Center for a Stateless Society. He’s organized as an anarchist activist for over fifteen years and has written extensively on ethics and technology.

Aaron Moritz

Aaron Moritz is an independent researcher, blogger, podcaster, and video producer. His work covers a wide variety of scientific and philosophical issues, from sustainability and health to ethics and the nature of reality. To see more of Aaron’s work, visit his blog, here.

Brandon Tomlin

Brandon Tomlin‘s interests lie in the realm of predictive science fiction, futurology, understanding what ways science and technology is influencing the future of humanity, and what ways these new developments are shaping an ever-accelerating future.

Ilham Bae

Ilhan Bae is a PhD candidate in the Alternative Futures PhD Program in the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He holds a BA in business administration and an MA in media & communication from Korea University. Formerly, he was a science journalist for the daily economic newspaper in Seoul, Electronic Times (1997-2010), and started its Futures section which pioneered futuristic discourses in Korean society. His reporting mainly concerned high tech industries such as robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and electronic vehicles. He has published two books about the future of roboics. He is a member of the Korean government’s Robot Ethics Charter committee which aims to establish laws to govern the interaction of robots and humans.

After stepping into futures studies, he has explored the conceptual history of futurism in East Asian culture, and received the Student Recognition Award in 2013 from the Association of Professional Futurists. His current focus is on spreading futures studies in East Asian countries. His Political Science doctoral thesis deals personhood-based civil rights issues related to remote-controlled robots.

Rene Milan

Rene Milan was born in 1948, raised in the liberal town of Hamburg after spending years 3 & 4 in Greenwich CT (the origin of my tragic love affair with the u.s.). 60s & 70s: exploring altered states of being and techniques for their attainment, and applying the results to continuing self analysis and informal and formal (in the capacity of transpersonal therapist and clinical psychologist) therapeutic processes. Becoming a transhumanist after reading Exo-Psychology in the mid 1970’s by accepting the principles of Leary’s SMI2LE agenda. 1980s to now: work with computers when they became ‘personal’ in order to gain a new perspective on the potential of control systems. Moved to the u.s. (Bay Area) in 1982 and to Tokyo in 1993, to London in 1998 and to españa in 2002. Lived and worked in 12 countries on 4 continents. Joined the WTA in 2002. My hindu handle is Baba Rien and my thelemic one Fra∴ Permutabo. Currently emerging from another transmorphosis.

Yshua Learn

Y’shua is currently studying intellectual-property law and previously studied Political Science with a concentration in meta-theory and Philosophy with a concentration in ethics & public policy, and an independent, elective focus on issues of consciousness and personal identity. Y’shua will be writing and blogging at sceneinrepose.com not only about the paradigm shifts and new theories the coming future will necessitate in all of the above areas, but also developing clear methods and strategies for how to bring understanding and acceptance of these ideas to a much broader and more diverse audience.

Evan Reese

Evan Reese is a lifelong student of the hard sciences and a continuing supporter of transhumanism. He reads the KurzweilAI.net Newsletter, listens to the Singularity 1 on 1 podcasts, and of course always reads the Emergence newsletters. ;­) He is a member of the Singularity Hub. Early on he was strongly influenced by the work of Vernor Vinge and F. M. Esfandiary and is currently inspired by the ideas of Ramez Naam and Ben Goertzel.

Jason C. Stone

Jason C. Stone holds an M.S. in Computer Science from The University of Texas at Dallas. His worked for several years as a developer and consultant in software development, network security and digital forensics. He is an amateur inventor who’s interests include personal scale manufacturing, intelligent systems, and distributed systems. His philosophical interests include ethics, the future of The Enlightenment, and the interaction between science and spirituality. He is currently a director at OHM Space Corporation, a nonprofit community workshop in Oklahoma City.

Harry J. Bentham

Harry J. Bentham is a futurist author based in Britain, an IEET contriubutor, and a member of the scientific Lifeboat Foundation think tank. The bulk of his ideas are explained in his 2013 book, Catalyst: A Techno-Liberation Thesis. His works include several science fiction and political science works, and he has gained increasing attention and praise at a column on the Iranian English-language broadcaster Press TV. Other examples of his work have appeared at over 40 diverse publications, including the techno-enthusiast h+ Magazine.

Devin Van Dyke

Devin Van Dyke is a student at Haverford College and the founder and president of the Haverford Transhumanist Society. His research interests include religious cosmology and ethics, the role of religion in the modern world, and the political dimensions of mental health. He is currently applying for fellowships in psychiatric research and writing his thesis on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and human origins.

Ted Chu

Ted Chu is a professor of Economics at New York University in Abu Dhabi, and former chief economist for General Motors and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Ted graduated from Fudan University in Shanghai, and earned his PhD in economics at Georgetown University. He is the founder of the nonprofit CoBe (Cosmic Being) Institute in Michigan, a senior scholar at ChangCe, a Beijing-based independent think tank, and a former president of Greater Washington Professional Forum. He is the author of Human Purpose and Transhuman Potential: A Cosmic Vision for Our Future Evolution (2014).

Ted is a former management consultant for Arthur D. Little, Inc. (ADL) and Decision Focus, Inc. (a Silicon Valley start up firm), focusing on building large-scale econometric models and system dynamics simulation models for strategic and tactical corporate decisions and conducting public policy research in climate change, air quality, yield management, and productivity enhancement. In mid-90s he worked for the World Bank as a macroeconomist in Central and Eastern Europe lending operations during region’s turbulent transitional period. Ted joined General Motors in 1996 as senior economist for Asia Pacific region, and later became Chief Economist and Director of Global Industry Analysis, leading a team of regional economists and product planners, and spearheaded the company’s growth in emerging markets, especially China, Brazil, and India. From 2010 to 2013, he was the Chief Economist for Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, reporting to the head of Strategy Unit and providing macroeconomic guidance to the sovereign wealth fund’s investment strategy and tactical asset allocation.

He is a member of National Association Business Economists and Conference of Business Economists. He also served as a long-time contributor to Blue Chip Panel of Economic Forecasters and the Consensus Economics Forecast (London). He frequently appeared on Voice of America’s TV and radio shows including Weekly Economic Forum. He co-founded and served as president of Washington Chinese Professional Association.

Giuseppe Vatinno

Giuseppe Vatinno was an IEET affiliate scholar in 2014. He is a journalist in Rome and a former member of the Italian parliament. He trained as a physicist at the Sapienza University of Rome. In 2012 Giuseppe was the first openly transhumanist member of the Italian parliament. He is author of Transhumanism: a new philosophy for the twenty-first century man (2010), Political Ecology (2011), Nothing and Everything: The Wonders of the Possible (2012) and Aenigma: Symbol Mystery and Mysticism (2013).

Mateus Stein

Mateus Stein is an undergraduate student from Santa Maria, RS, Southern Brazil. He studies at Federal University of Santa Maria (Universidade Federal de Santa Maria or UFSM), and is currently working on his Undergraduate Dissertation called Enhancement Technologies and the Modern Quest for Authenticity (A Busca Moderna pela Autenticidade e as Tecnologias de Aprimoramento) in order to get a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy. He also intends to apply to a Master’s Program in Meta and Normative Ethics in the same place soon.

His areas of research interest are: Bioethics, Meta-ethics, Normative Ethics, Political Philosophy and Social Philosophy. On the other hand, his favorite subjects are: Authenticity and its role for Personal Identity, Communitarianism, Cosmopolitanism, Emerging Technologies, Enhancement Technologies, Free Will, Multiculturalism, Philosophy and Science Fiction, Technoprogressivism and Transhumanism.

He considers himself to be a Transhumanist Activist and he is also the founder of the Brazilian Longevity initiative. His main short time objective is to promote the Transhumanism as a legit philosophical subject in Brazil. Besides, his most important lifetime goal is to become an important contributor to the Transhumanist Agenda as well.

Zoltan Istvan

Bestselling visionary author Zoltan Istvan, an American-Hungarian, began a solo, multi-year sailing journey around the world at the age of 21. His main cargo was 500 handpicked books, mostly classics. He’s explored over 100 countries—many as a journalist for the National Geographic Channel—writing, filming, and appearing in dozens of television stories, articles, and webcasts. His work has also been featured by The New York Times Syndicate, Outside, San Francisco Chronicle, BBC Radio, NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, Animal Planet, and the Travel Channel. In addition to his award-winning coverage of the war in Kashmir, he gained worldwide attention for pioneering and popularizing the extreme sport of volcano boarding. Zoltan later became a director for the international conservation group WildAid, leading armed patrol units to stop the billion-dollar illegal wildlife trade in Southeast Asia. Back in America, he started various successful businesses, from real estate development to filmmaking to viticulture, joining them under ZI Ventures. He is a philosophy and religious studies graduate of Columbia University and resides in San Francisco with his daughter and physician wife. Zoltan recently published The Transhumanist Wager, a fictional thriller describing apatheist Jethro Knights and his unwavering quest for immortality via science and technology. The novel was recently a #1 bestseller in both Philosophy and Sci-Fi Visionary & Metaphysical on Amazon. Zoltan also blogs for Psychology Today and The Huffington Post.

Steve Fuller

Steve Fuller is Auguste Comte Professor of Social Epistemology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick, UK. Originally trained in history and philosophy of science, Fuller is best known for his foundational work in the field of ‘social epistemology’, which is concerned with the normative grounds of organized inquiry. ‘Social epistemology’ is also the name of a quarterly journal that he founded in 1987 as well as the first of his twenty books. He has most recently authored a trilogy relating to the idea of a ‘post-’ or ‘trans-‘ human future, all published with Palgrave Macmillan:Humanity 2.0: What It Means to Be Human Past, Present and Future (2011), Preparing for Life in Humanity 2.0(2012) and (with Veronika Lipinska) The Proactionary Imperative: A Foundation for Transhumanism (2013).